Peg Kerr's Journal

I had a medical procedure scheduled for this past week, but I was uncertain whether it would be able to go forward because of my cough. If the anaesthesiologist said the cough was too severe, it would be canceled.

Accordingly, my priority this past week was quiet and rest, trying to get my cough to calm down. Annoyingly, the air quality in the Twin Cities remained problematic, so I couldn't sit outside on my porch.

So I stayed behind shut doors, near my air filters. I took showers with shower bombs infused with peppermint and eucalyptus. I drank oceans of tea to try to calm my coughing. I ate cough drops until I was sick of the taste. I curtailed my exercise.

I simply rested.

(My efforts were successful and I underwent the procedure last Thursday. I was recovering yesterday, which is why this collage is a day late.)

Image description: A door is ajar at night. Light outlines the crack, but the opposite of the door is a field of stars. An owl at rest sits peacefully in the lower left corner, eyes closed. Upper left corner: a blooming white poppy (signifying rest) with a glowing full moon shining at its center.

Quiet



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I noted with some bemusement that I had twelve different appointments on my calendar this week.

Some were just for fun: I went to my sister-in-law's retirement party (she has been serving as my financial planner). It was a really lovely event, with an astounding charcuterie spread that stretched along an enormous table--the image I chose didn't come close to capturing the scale. I got together with a friend to watch a movie based on a book we'd both enjoyed as chidren.

I had a doctor's appointment as preparation for a procedure I will be having in a week and a half. I went out to see my mom (I took her to a doctor's appointment today, and I will be going back tomorrow to help her with some personal care.) I had a writing group meeting (fortunately, not so much critiquing was involved with this meeting, as I was the only one who submitted this month, so everyone else was critiquing ME). I had my usual Zoom writing sessions four mornings a week with some of my writing friends, although I was moving so much this week that I didn't make all of them. I kept the balls in the air with the volunteer group I'm running. I purchased a new computer as I'm running out of space on this one (I should be getting delivery tomorrow). I bought stuff for the garden and got at least some of them into the ground. I moved my house plants onto the front porch for the summer.

All in all, I was quite a busy little bee, which is why a bee has shown up in the image.

Image description: Background, dimly perceived behind other figures: a page of a monthly calendar. Top: a medical worker takes blood pressure on a woman's arm. Center left: a woman's hand takes popcorn from a movie popcorn container. Center right: a laptop seen from above, with a woman's hands on the keyboard. A spreadsheet is displayed on the screen. Lower right: an elaborate charcuterie spread on a wooden board. Above the board: a honeybee with pollen loaded on its hind legs sips nectar from a flower.

Busy



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May Day this year was spectacular and beautiful and badly needed.

The weather was absolutely perfect: a deep blue sky with only a very occasional wisp of cloud, with a slight breeze and pleasant temperature.

One of the things that needs to be gauged carefully each year is when to show up. Show up too late, and it is impossible to find space on the curb to watch the parade. Show up too early, and it can be a very long time to wait (with no convenient porta-potties nearby). This year, I judged it perfectly. The parade started at 12:00 noon, but I had picked my spot and was seated in the shade by 10:30 a.m. Some years, I have been content with a blanket on the curb, but this year, given the problem I've been having with my hips, I decided to bring a foldable camp chair, an excellent decision, and I was entirely comfortable.

I brought a mini picnic for myself and my reading tablet, and spent part of my time reading and part of it watching the crowd. Bicycles and unicycles zipped back and forth, and entrepreneurial vendors trundled wheeled carts past the gathering crowd, selling food and drinks, pinwheels, and balloons. Eventually, people in costumes started drifting by: an elderly couple dressed in silk robes, carrying walking staffs hung with ribbons and crystals, a tuba player striding quickly on his way to join a band at the parade starting place, dressed in a colorful costume with sunblowers stitched to his trousers. I saw a man in a gorgeously sequinned dress skate by on rollerblades.

Eventually, both sides of the street swelled with a huge, excited crowd, and the parade began, an extraordinary explosion of color. All the floats were human-powered, and all the parade participants were brimming with joy, calling out to the onlookers, "Happy May Day!" Women dressed in fluttering chiffon, silks, feather boas, and ribbons carried poles mounted with papier-mache bees, teasing the children in the crowd, lowering the poles so that the bees 'gathered nectar" from the flowers they wore in their hair. Bicycles tricked out with cardboard painted as colorful alebrijes, fire horses, dragons, and beetles streamed by. A float representing a snow plow named "Abolish Ice" pushed cardboard federal ICE cars ahead of it with its shovel. A huge loon towered over the crowd, flapping its wings. Aztec dancers danced down the street (some of them did the entire parade barefoot), shaking jingle belts and tamborines, beating drums, and smudging the crowd with clouds of burning sage. Several bands marched by in motley costumes, and the Southside Battle Train revved up the crowd, led by a Tyrannosaurus rex that cheerfully snapped its jaws at the crowd. A newly married couple marched by, accompanied by cheering friends and family, carrying a banner introducing them to the onlookers. Hari Krishna adherents, chanting, a huge trans flag carried by people of all ages, people dressed up as locusts and whistles and lotus flowers, members of a boxing gym, representatives of the postal union, protesting against ICE, and more.

When the parade had passed by, the crowd gathered their chairs and blankets and streamed into Powderhorn Park. After the usual couple of hours' delay, the Ceremony was held at the edge of Blanket Hill, culminating in the rowing of the Sun across the lake to raise the Tree of Life on the shore.

A small group of friends gathered in the spot where we have assembled for years. To my delight, Fiona, Alona, and M were there. M grinned and chortled and flirted with everyone and did her dogged best to eat every speck of dirt around herself as far as her little arms could reach, a wreath of flowers in her hair.

A perfect May Day and a perfect day.

Background: a perfectly blue sky. Upper Right: A woman in a hat and sunglasses (Peg) smiles at the camera. A sign just below her face reads "L♥ve wins." The End. Upper left: an Aztec dancer in full regalia. Center: A loon rampant spreads its wings. In front and slightly to the left of the loon: the May Day Sun. Lower portion: The May Day Tree of Life spreads its arms wide, upheld by a crowd dressed in red.

May Day



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I got my karate black belt exactly 15 years ago.

I have been decluttering, and I finally threw out my old karate bag this week, with all my old, moldering sparring equipment. I will clearly not use it again.
But I am grateful for what karate brought to my life--even if my knees and hips are not.

My two sisters and I drove down to the Chicago area last weekend, where we joined up with our brother in an Air B&B and spent the weekend visiting relatives, friends, and the old haunts of our childhood.

I grew up in Park Ridge on the northwest side of the city of Chicago. We had a lot of fun recounting stories. It was an idyllic place to grow up, albeit sheltered and non-diverse. Park Ridge has a beautiful city center, and many of the places we remember are still there. I loved seeing the public library, where I learned to love reading, and the Pickwick Theater, a gorgeous Art Nouveau building that is on the National Register of historic places, which still regularly shows movies today.

The area has had a lot of rain, and the lawns were startling green, and forsythia bushes and magnolia trees were blooming all over the city. We had a lot of fun driving around, enjoying the beautiful architecture and rediscovering the homes of our friends.

Park Ridge was a dry town while we were growing up, but now restaurants can serve alcohol, and there is a very thriving restaurant scene in the buildings overlooking the railroad tracks, where trains run to and from downtown Chicago. We met with several old friends. An old high school classmate of mine spied me through a restaurant window at one point and ran out into the street to hug me. We had coffee with my brother's former prom date, and had breakfast with another high school friend of my sister's and dinner with a third.

We met my uncle Tom and his wife Charlotte for lunch in his senior apartment, and we also met with my Aunt Susie, who is in a different senior community very close to where we were staying.

We spent an afternoon driving around Evanston, the city where our parents were raised. There, we saw the homes of our grandparents and great-grandparents, and stopped by Lighthouse Beach, where we swam in Lake Michigan as children.

We ended the trip with an evening at one of my cousins' homes, where we enjoyed a potluck dinner together. We spent the evening telling stories and laughing, and passing around old photographs and a high school yearbook.

It was wonderful to visit the old hometown.

Image description: Bottom: a one-story home with an open front porch. Behind the house: Peg and her three siblings smile at the camera. Behind them, another family grouping smiles at the camera. Behind them, top: upper left tower of Pickwick Theater, center: lighthouse, upper right: the sign for Sugar Bowl restaurant.

Homecoming



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I'm getting this out a little early because I'm heading to Minicon tomorrow.

I got together with a friend, Rebecca, for another Year of Adventure event: she spent a couple of pleasant hours teaching me some of the very basic principles of ikebana, or Japanese flower arrangement (she has been studying the practice for a number of years). I recognized some of what she explained to me about the principles of Japanese design from what I know about bonsai, and from some articles I'd read about Japanese fashion.

These arrangements are meant to evoke tranquility. They emphasize asymmetry, minimalism, and negative space. Rebecca demonstrated how to a build the structure using a kenzan (a spiky metal pin frog) to secure stems in a shallow bowl.

Traditionally, ikebana focuses on three elements: Shin (heaven - the tallest line), Soe (earth - the supporting line), and Hikae (human - the balancing line). The stems you choose for each are set at specific angles in the most formal style. We played around with free form. I had no idea what I was doing, of course, but it was fun and absorbing, and I was genuinely proud of my first effort.

Since Japanese ikebana emphasizes minimalism, this collage is very simple: a picture of my arrangement displayed on a table top. The only other element I added is the enso symbol in the upper right, a circle which may be closed (perfection) or open (the beauty of imperfection).

The enso is the symbol of the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, which is about embracing the beauty found in imperfection, transience, and the natural cycle of growth and decay. Ikebana embodies this by celebrating the fleeting beauty of life.

Image description: An ikebana flower arrangement in a white vase with eucalyptus leaves, pussy willows, sea holly, and white tulips sits on a table. Upper right corner: an enso circle.

Ikebana



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I made three entire collages this week, and rejected the first two of them. I guess they were aesthetically fine, but they were about subjects I'd touched on before, and I was dissatisfied that I was saying anything new and didn't feel like rehashing everything.

My problem was partly that I didn't feel I had much to work with this week, because I fell ill partway through the week, and everything dissolved into that. At first, I was afraid I had contracted Covid, as some of the symptoms matched. Everything became a blur, and I was barely able to care for myself (Eric, bless him, did do an emergency grocery run for me). I did order Covid tests from the drugstore and had them delivered, but I kept testing negative.

After three days of blurred and surreal misery, I recovered. Eventually, I decided it was just a particularly virulent general bug with a heaping side of extremely gross gastrointestinal effects.

Okay, not very interesting to do yet another collage about being sick, either. But what particularly struck me about falling ill this time was how very helpless and isolated I felt. And that, more than the illness itself, is what I tried to capture in the images I used.

I experimented with technical effects to do this, extracting the figure on the bed and mixing it with an image of bare tree branches, and then overlaying the result back over the same position on the bed (keeping the bed itself in clear focus). I then used the same tree branches as a scrim overlay in the background. I was trying to capture the sense of dissolving, the fear that I might actually fade into nothingness and not be able to come back.

I did come back. This time.

I always have a lurking fear that I won't manage to do so the next time.

Image description: Foreground: a woman lies on a bed, either asleep or ill. The bed is focused but the woman is indistinct, as if run through by cracks. Background above the bed: the blurred image of a woman with closed eyes, overlaid by a scrim of semitransparent leafless branches.


Dissolving



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As I have referred to obliquely before, I am Doing Something with regard to the events in Minneapolis/St. Paul.



I was pulled in as a volunteer, oh, perhaps a month and a half ago. I was asked to set up the project, and despite my genuine nervousness at the responsibility I was handed, I did. I analyzed what needed to get done, wrote documentation to describe the process, and handled it alone for three days. Then more volunteers were added, and I was asked to train them. Then the team was doubled again, and I had to train them, too, and incorporate them into the team. Then I had to set up a couple of subteams, hold standup meetings, and start thinking about process, team building, donor relations, technological security, resource sharing, and budget.

Rather to my astonishment, now that I have retired, I have become for the first time in my career, no kidding, an actual manager, overseeing a team of ten people.

Over the last week, things have ratcheted up, and the phrase "It's like herding cats" has definitely floated across my mind.

I've been told I'm rather good at it. But it's a bit daunting. I'm definitely spending more hours at it than I spent at my job at the Synod.

Wow. I'm an actual manager. Who knew?

Image description: Lower third: a double monitor showing a world map, and a hand holding a phone, also showing a map. Center: a hand holds a marker writing the words "Project Planning" in red letters. Just below stands a row of cats, lurching forward in an uneven line. Upper right: a partial view of a woman with the word "Manager" superimposed over her. Upper left: Signal icon.

Manager



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This week's collage feels slightly as though it is edging toward being a little too personal and perhaps embarrassingly sentimental.

Back when I began doing collage, I started with Soulcollage. One of the series of collages that the person who developed Soulcollage suggested that you do, which felt a little odd, almost New Age-y, was to identify an animal that you associated with for each of your seven chakra points.

Well, okay.

I didn't do collages for each of the seven chakras, but I did do one for the heart chakra, identifying the animal I associated with it as a bunny.

In my family, 'bunny' was our endearment. That's what Rob and I called each other, and that is what we called the girls. We associated the word with 'love.'

For a number of years after Rob died, the sight of bunnies was a bit of a mixed blessing. Whenever I saw a rabbit hanging out under the lilac bush he had planted in our backyard, I would smile and say to it, "Say hi to Rob for me."

On the other hand, stepping into a home decoration store before Easter felt almost like an agony, like salt on a raw wound.

But lately, perhaps because I've been living alone and missing my girls and missing Rob, and perhaps because the awfulness of the world has added so much stress, I've been adding bunnies to my bedroom. Art postcards on a closet door. The little dishes I keep on my bedside table, where I put my bedtime pill, or my hair ties. A small pottery rabbit peeking out from a plant pot. The mug where I put the water I drink at night.

On the one hand, this feels almost a little childish. Yet, they've been a comforting reminder, that although I may live alone, I am still loved.

Image description: Background: a wooden door covered with art postcards featuring bunnies. A metal cone with forsythias hangs by a yellow ribbon from the door handle. Overlaid over the door are pictures of various decorative bunnies: a straw bunny, lower right corner, a pottery bunny peeking out of a planter of succulents, a couple of small dishes with bunnies inside, and a mug decorated with bunnies.

Bunnies



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Unusually, I will not be doing my collage this week about what has been foremost in my mind, some important and satisfying work that I've been doing, but that's because I can't talk about it. It's related to the resistance, and I want to protect the people I'm working with. So: something else.

Last week's collage was about my new car. Now that I have that shiny new car in my garage, it was time to get rid of the old one. Poor old Lafayette, my 2000 Camry, got its rear end crunched last November. It was definitely time.

Yet, when it came right down to it, saying goodbye to my old car was unexpectedly difficult. That's because it was Rob's car. His last car. The last one that had his name on the title. We drove to all of his appointments at Mayo Clinic in that car. Eventually, he grew too ill to drive, and when we got rid of my car, I took over driving the Camry. And it served us well--it was a trustworthy, reliable car, and we were grateful to have it.

I took it into the body shop to get the estimate, and they told me that it could be just left there, and my insurance company would pick it up. I had already cleaned it out, but I was still taken by surprise by a wave of grief as I saw the shop worker drive it away. It was another link with Rob that was disappearing. How can I keep being taken by surprise this way?

I wish I had given the hood one last caress, that I had told Lafayette, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Thank you."

I wish I had time to say goodbye.

Isn't it strange that we can get so emotionally attached to inanimate objects?

Image description: Background: shadowy fog. Foreground: a Toyota Camry with a crunched back end. The license plate reads "Rob Car." A semi-transparent man's head [Rob's head] hovers above the car.

Object Permanence



Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.